Raymond F. Baker Center for Plant Breeding

Interns at Work

During harvest season, the students in Dr. Fehr's internship class work about 40 hours a week. Because of this work schedule, the number of credit hours that students take this semester must be reduced, usually to about nine hours. Fortunately, students receive pay at an hourly rate for their labor, a benefit much appreciated by the students. In addition, these students get hands-on experience learning tasks and procedures commonly used by plant breeders. Their work at the farm and in the lab is often supervised by Assistant Scientists Grace Welke and Susan Johnson. Not all the work is glamorous, however. Above, Heath Bliek and Adam Peterson unload soy plants that were hand harvested.

Raechel Baumgartner, Wade Kent, and Adam Peterson use screens to sort soybean seeds for size and quality.
A favorite job for most is operating the combine. This special single-row combine is used by plant breeders to obtain seeds from the smaller plots planted in breeding programs. The small sacks of seeds are carefully marked for the particular cultivar being harvested. Here Stacy Steinlage operates the combine.